CTS
by Ryuune Seichi
Summary: Six friends will band together to join the frontlines and escape their horrible fate. Rating may change later, I'm still debating on that. Ideas for new characters are welcome.
1. Formation

**ソードアート**・**オンライン**

**Sword Art Online: ****CTS**

So, I've been watching this amazing Anime, and I'd really recommend anyone who hasn't heard of it to give it a watch if you're a fan of Shonen Action anime. Or especially if you like .Hack, because it has a fairly similar feel. Anyway, enough yappin.

**Chapter 1: ****Formation**

**Choose a weapon.** I had already gone through the customization process, and in fact, this was the last step. Once I made this decision, I would enter the game. But I couldn't rush this, if I chose the wrong weapon, then I would be going nowhere fast and probably die quite a few times. _Alright, think…_

Browsing the list, I noticed some choices that were listed in the manual were missing. _I must have to win them from monsters or something._ Even with that, there was still a lot to choose from. Swords, spears, daggers, all sorts of bladed weapons. _I think…I'll try this._ I touched my finger to a panel that read **Twin Swords** and the world went black.

A few seconds passed before a harsh red light entered my eyes, causing me to wince and rub my eyes. People seemed to be panicking in the square, and I felt someone bump me from behind. Turning, I noticed a very familiar face. He had mid-length, dirty brown hair, and a black trench coat. "Kouhei?" My friend didn't like what he described to me that he'd look like in the game. In fact, he looked exactly like he did in real life. "I thought-"

"No time to talk, come with me!" Without giving me a chance to protest, he grabbed my arm and dragged me into a nearby shop. Inside were four other players, and I'm pretty sure I could recognize most of them from school. The first one to greet me was a boy with short, dark red hair, and he seemed to be slightly older than me.

"Hello, are you the one Kouhei was talking about?" He deftly materialized a menu screen in front of him, and after a couple of taps of his finger, a pop-up appeared before me.

**Accept friend invite from: Yoru? Y/N.** I thought for a second and shrugged before hitting accept. After taking a look at everyone, I noticed one of the girls was on the floor, curled up in a ball and crying softly. "Is she okay?"

"Oh, you must not have been here for the announcement," Yoru said. "The creator of the game showed up before us, we're trapped here." It took me a moment to process this, especially with this kid smiling as he said it. I decided to look into it myself, and brought up my own menu, and scrolled down to where **Logout** should have been. There was only an empty space. Clicking it didn't do anything.

"We're trapped?! But what about our real selves?!" Yoru gave me another uncomfortable smile, which I think was supposed to help relax me, but it only made me more nervous.

"Yep yep, if we die, we die for real, and the only way out is to clear the 100th floor and beat the game."I could feel my eyes widening in horror at the nonchalant statement.

"How can you be so calm?!" He thought for a moment before giving me another smile.

"I know I can beat this game without dying, so I'm not worried." I couldn't even respond before he took me by the shoulder, "c'mon, you need to meet everybody." He pulled out a fairly large sword, "I'm Yoru, a broadsword user." Then he pointed out another boy who I think was my age, but might've been older. "He's Beat, Katana."

Beat was leaning against the wall, a katana strapped to his back, and straight blue hair which was sticking almost straight up. All he did was grunt in response. "Over there," Yoru continued, "is Miyabi. She's using daggers, and she's gonna be a Beast Tamer.

Miyabi didn't acknowledge us, she just sat at the table, occasionally checking her menu, and every time she closed it, she appeared to become more stressed. She ran her hand through her long, straight, blonde hair, and finally slumped against the table. "Finally," Yoru said, ignoring Miyabi completely, "we have miss sunshine, Nyoko."

I walked over and squatted next to her, "are you okay?" She looked up to me with light blue eyes that looked almost watery with all of the tears, but she looked away.

"She hasn't taken the news so well, but she uses that Yari(1) you see sitting next to her." Yoru explained, and I sighed.

"I guess it's my turn for an introduction." I stood back up and pulled out my twin swords, "my name's Seichi, and my weapons are these two swords."

Yoru spent the rest of the night teaching us the basics of Sword Art Online, because he was a beta tester, and I was grateful for the help. He apparently made it to the 6th floor by the end of the month. After deliberation, it was decided among us that we would create a guild in the morning, and that Yoru would be our leader. On that note, each of us laid out some sleeping bags on the floor and went to sleep.

My sleep was disturbed only a half hour into it by the sound of soft sobbing, and it was pretty easy to guess who it was. "Nyoko?" I called out softly. The sobbing ceased for a moment with a small sniffle, and I crawled over to where she was sleeping, careful not to disturb anyone else. A streetlamp just outside the window illuminated the room enough for me to see her straight brown hair, and the tear stains all over her pale face. I couldn't help giving her a small touch on the shoulder.

She tensed up for a moment before collapsing into my chest, and continuing to cry. I really had no idea what to do, so I just ran my hand through her hair a few times, hoping she would calm down before anyone else woke up and saw us like this.

After a few minutes, she rubbed her eyes, said something that I think sounded like "thanks", and crawled back into her sleeping bag. I nodded, and got back into my own before closing my eyes.

I could feel the sunlight pouring on my face, feeling the hand shaking me on the shoulder. "Seichi, time to get up, we need to start questing." This voice didn't belong to Yoru, and opening my eyes, I could see that it was Kouhei. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, seeing everyone else already packing their things and getting ready to go. Nyoko looked a little better than she did yesterday, quietly pulling her hair up into a ponytail, and grabbing her bag. She didn't give me or anyone else a straight look.

Yoru walked in, holding up a scroll, "I got our guild registered!" He opened it and we all looked at it in confusion.

I was the first one to ask what was on all of our minds. "What does CTS stand for?"

Yoru gave us one of his trademark smiles before announcing triumphantly. "Cute Tomato Star."

And so it begins, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I hope to see you around for future chapters! Until then, later!

Author's Notes:

I nearly forgot these.

– Yari, a Japanese spear, Wikipedia has a fairly extensive article on it.

– Seichi, myself, a picture is here. .me/profile/20100131/4b65132452b0f_ (Ignore hair colors and clothes for now)

– Nyoko, gallery/#/d4e1bug

– Kouhei , fs70/i/2011/029/f/a/ct_s4_kouhei_by_najwah_

– Yoru, . /_

– Beat, gallery/#/d2pk8ec


	2. Floor 1

**Sword Art Online: ****CTS**

So, I guess after watching episode 9, this just became a slightly altered version of the game. Oops. Oh well, I'm still sticking with my original plan. Most of these characters used with permission from Yoru. Nyoko used with permission from…well…Nyoko.

**Chapter 2: ****Floor 1**

"What are these?" A few days after our Guild was founded, Yoru called Nyoko, Kouhei, and me into the main room of the tavern we were staying at. He gave us another one of those smiles before he answered.

"Those are customizable hair sprays. You guys have such blah hair colors, so I got these from a quest or three." I wasn't entirely sure whether to be offended or grateful, but I just shrugged and thanked him. In these few days, most of us had reached level 5 or 6, and of course Yoru was ahead of us, telling us he was level 8.

I turned the tube over in my hand, shrugged, and decided to bring up its interface and click use. From there, a screen popped up showing all of the different color options. As I scrolled through them, Nyoko and Kouhei had already chosen their colors, and I glanced over to look. Nyoko had picked a lovely shade of aquamarine, which shimmered even in the dull light coming in from the windows, and I couldn't help myself from staring at her for a second.

"Earth to Seichi-n." Yoru waved a hand in my face, snapping me back to reality. I also idly noticed that Kouhei had also changed his hair color to a darker blue, almost purple.

_Alright, I know what I want._ I rolled through the choices once again, this time more quickly, and clicked the option I had chosen. There was a slight tingling sensation on my head, which I assumed meant it worked. Especially since I watched the can shatter into thousands of sparkling green fragments. "That's a nice color," Nyoko said, smiling at me.

I rubbed the back of my head, "thanks."

"Alright, now that everyone doesn't look completely boring, it's time to go to our first dungeon!" We all looked at each other before Miyabi stepped forward with a protest.

"Isn't it a bit early? We're supposed to be level 10 I think…" Yoru smiled and shook his head.

"We'll be fine, I soloed this dungeon during the beta when I was level 9, and there are a lot of us." Miyabi didn't seem convinced, but Yoru simply smiled and said, "who's the leader?"

And just like that, we were out the door and walking across the field, killing whatever random beasts would come. Beat handled his katana expertly, and when I asked him why, he told me he practiced at a kendo dojo regularly. Though he had told me his passion was really boxing, but the unarmed skills in this game are extremely weak. My friend Kouhei wielded a hooked sword, Miyabi used knives, Yoru preferred this unusably large blade, and of course Nyoko was slashing enemies down gracefully with her yari.

When the dungeon came into view, we watched a girl, with long black hair and red highlights on the tips, running out, and turned to face a monster, her sword and shield raised. "Kobold!" Yoru shouted, running to help her, and all of us followed him. However, there was no stopping the creature from smacking away her shield with his mace, and then jumping on her to bite into her shoulder. The girl screamed in pain, dropping her sword, and the kobold jumped up and slammed his mace down into her head multiple times, her health bar rapidly depleting. The monster didn't stop until there was nothing left above her neck besides the red coding that indicated damage taken, her screams becoming inaudible when he broke her jaw. I only saw her name for a split second. Naya. Then she shattered into the familiar emerald shards.

With the kobold distracted, it was easy for the six of us to take it down, but after the battle, we all exchanged a silent, grim glance. "Maybe this is too hard after all…" Nyoko murmured, breaking the stillness. We all paused for a moment more, until Yoru spoke up.

"C'mon guys, she was probably a low level, and she was alone. Trust me, I've done this before, as long as we work together, kobolds can be killed easily." We all stared at each other, then gave a nod of agreement, walking cautiously inside the dungeon. Yoru took point, and with her broad, sweeping attacks, we decided Nyoko should take the rear, all of us wary of a surprise kobold attack that would ultimately bring our life to zero. However, the dungeon trip was fairly uneventful, we killed kobolds one by one, the biggest group we had to fight was three, but by then, each of us had leveled again, so the kobolds weren't posing much of a threat anymore.

When we reached the large ominous door at the very back of the dungeon, Yoru turned around and said, "okay everyone, good job, that should be enough for us all to upgrade our equipment, and be strong enough to take on the boss in…" he stopped, counting on his fingers. "Fifteen days." I wondered how he got to fifteen counting on his fingers, but I've long learned not to question Yoru's logic.

We decided to walk back, which caused the kobolds to respawn and giving us another chance to gain some experience, and all of us but Yoru gained another level, leaving him at 9 and bringing us to 8. When we got back to town, each of us went our separate ways to buy potions, teleport crystals, and, most importantly, new equipment. I found a fairly powerful pair of swords that had a required level of 7, so I bought them and sold off my old swords, then got to work purchasing some slightly more heavy duty armor.

I wasn't the first to get back to the tavern. In fact, the only one still out shopping was Yoru. While we waited for him, I found a mirror nearby and stood in front of it, admiring my new iron chest plate and leg platings, and ran my fingers through my black hair, tipped off with a scarlet red. _15 days, huh?_


End file.
